With rapidly growing of user's needs for accessing digital contents everywhere, various communication technologies have been developed for transmission of the digital contents. These communication technologies may be developed for different environments, different transmission speeds and/or different user requirements. In addition, several medium access control (MAC)/physical (PHY) protocols are established based on different communication standards, which define different communication methods based on heterogeneous mediums. For example, IEEE 1901 communication standard is used for power line (PLC), IEEE 802.11 communication standard is used for wireless communication (i.e. WiFi), IEEE 802.3 communication standard is used for Ethernet, and Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) communication standard is used for coaxial cables, and so on.
As a result, a MAC abstraction sub-layer is developed for converging these various communication standards. Please refer to FIG. 1, which is a schematic diagram of an exemplary communication device 10 in a data plane. The communication device 10 may be a mobile phone, laptop, tablet computer, electronic book, modem, or portable computer system, and uses various communication standards for communication. In FIG. 1, the MAC abstraction sub-layer is arranged between an upper layer and a plurality of MAC types of a MAC layer corresponding to a plurality of communication standards. The upper layer can be a network layer, a transport layer, an application layer or any layer responsible for processing the signalings and the packets received from the MAC abstraction sub-layer, and signalings and packets to be transmitted via the MAC abstraction sub-layer. The plurality of MAC types of the MAC layer include 802.3 MAC, 802.11 MAC, 1901 MAC and MoCA MAC complied with to the IEEE 802.3 communication standard, IEEE 802.11 communication standard, IEEE 1901 communication standard and MoCA communication standard, respectively. Further, each of the MAC types of the MAC layer includes a service access point (SAP), such that the MAC abstraction sub-layer can communicate with the MAC layer via the corresponding SAPs.
For example, when there is a packet arriving at the 802.11 MAC, the MAC abstraction sub-layer receives the packet via the SAP of the 802.11 MAC. Alternatively, when there is a packet arriving at the MAC abstraction sub-layer and is needed to be transmitted to the 1901 MAC, the MAC abstraction sub-layer transmits the packet via the SAP of the 1901 MAC. In addition, the communication device 10 in the data plane includes a plurality of PHY types of a PHY layer. The plurality of PHY types of the PHY layer include an 802.3 PHY, an 802.11 PHY, a 1901 PHY and a MoCA PHY, which is complied with the IEEE 802.3 communication standard, IEEE 802.11 communication standard, IEEE 1901 communication standard and MoCA communication standard, respectively. Thus, the packet of the 802.11 MAC, 802.3 MAC, 1901 MAC or MoCA MAC can be received/transmitted through a corresponding PHY type of the PHY layer.
However, with current MAC abstraction sub-layer architecture, it is incapable of providing a unified configuration experience to users due to various MAC types of the MAC layer (e.g. 802.3 MAC, 802.11 MAC, 1901 MAC and MoCA MAC). More specifically, it is difficult for a user to set the communication device 10 compatible of the MAC abstraction sub-layer because each MAC type of the MAC layer has a dedicated MAC parameter setting (e.g. format, length, etc). A user has to individually set the MAC parameters to conform with the parameter settings of the MAC types, causing inconvenience user experience.